One example of a search system is disclosed in JP-A-2002-032401 (hereinbelow referred to as Patent Document 1). As described in paragraphs 0015-0016, the search system disclosed in this document includes user profile information and matching degree information of documents for each individual profile, carries out a computation of scores for each document of the search results based on the profile information of users and matching degree information that the search system holds in advance in addition to the search conditions that are applied as input when the user carries out a search, and, as search results that are arranged in order of higher scores, alters the order within a list of documents.
Another example of a search system is disclosed in JP-A-2006-331295 (hereinbelow referred to as Patent Document 2). As disclosed in paragraphs 0049-0056, the search system disclosed in this document accumulates as operation history the browsing time of Web pages that have been accessed by the user in the past, and at the time a search is carried out, performs a computation of the score of each Web page of the search results and then alters the order of the search results that are arranged in order of higher scores while giving consideration to the operation history.